Nearly two months after the government said it suspected foul play in the death of former Defence Permanent Secretary Noble Mayombo, little is known of the investigation that President Museveni ordered.

The army is tight-lipped on the matter. “I will not make a comment on it,” said Col. James Mugira, the head of the inquiry team. “You will be briefed at an appropriate time.”
But sources close to the military said that the inquiry team started work about a week ago.

LONG OVERDUE: Kulayigye

The same sources said that although the team was set to start work soon after Mayombo’s burial, it could not because of the delay to receive the post-mortem report from Nairobi where the officer died while undergoing treatment.

President Museveni told mourners at Mayombo’s burial on May 5 that he was not satisfied with calls by the fallen officer’s father to let rest any speculation as to the cause of death.

The President said that Mayombo had been a target for elimination of a “criminal gang in the region”, which also had other senior people in the NRM government in its sights.

Mr Museveni, who revealed that he too was on the list, added that he had warned Mayombo accordingly. The President duly announced the appointment of a three-member team headed by Col. Mugira, the head of the Armoured Brigade, to look into Mayombo’s death.

Col. Mugira, a lawyer who at one time deputised Mayombo at the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence, was to be assisted by military toxicologist Tagaswire Rusoke and another doctor the President did not name at the time. At a national funeral in Kampala a day earlier, a member of Mayombo’s family had pledged to provide a toxicologist following strong talk that the brigadier had been poisoned.

Mayombo died in a Nairobi hospital on May 1 of what experts said was acute pancreatitis, a condition associated with the inflammation of the pancreas. He was buried with full military honours at his ancestral home in Kijura in the Burahya County of Kabarole District on May5.

It was during the burial ceremony that President Museveni, who had provided his presidential jet to fly a critically ill Mayombo to Nairobi, expressed doubt at the medical explanations given for the cause of death of a man he eulogised as hardworking, honest and incorruptible. Shortly after announcing the probe, everything went silent.

The family said that it was patient with the investigation team. “Let it do its work with the hope that they get to the bottom and dig out the truth and nothing but the truth,” said Mr Philip Winyi, Mayombo’s older brother.